Prioritization of vehicles crossing over pedestrian crossing in cities today and traffic passing through old textures have made the design around new streets in one hand and valuable historic buildings in other hand into a challenge for architects in historic and developing cities like Isfahan in Iran.
The project site is between Saint Mary’s Church and a newly made street at the nearest distance to Jolfa old square.
Following construction of the street passing through the old texture of Jolfa district in Isfahan and rise of economic value of the adjacent premises, the Safavid period central courtyard House in the project site was also destroyed like other old houses in this texture.
After destruction of the registered Safavi House by owners, request for a building permit to construct a commercial center, our office was assigned to design the project.
Insufficient experience in urban spaces in Isfahan, which is limited to a few spaces including Jolfa square, made the commercial building continue to exist as an urban courtyard immediately beside the pavement of the new street.
Such an approach moving from architecture scale to urban design scale has been common in most public places of the old textures.
By applying a minor change in the site and angle of the destroyed Safavid House and placing the axis of courtyard on axis of Saint Mary’s Church dome, we retrieved the church’s forgotten skyline and gave it back to the city sky. In fact, the present commercial building is a framework for the skyline of church dome.